Classic Movie Review: Wrong Move (1975)

Wrong Move (1975) 

Directed by: Wim Wenders.

Written by: Peter Handke based on the novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Starring: Rüdiger Vogler (Wilhelm), Hans Christian Blech (Laertes), Hanna Schygulla (Therese Farner), Nastassja Kinski (Mignon), Peter Kern (Bernhard Landau), Ivan Desny (Industrieller / The Industrialist), Marianne Hoppe (Mutter / The Mother), Lisa Kreuzer (Janine), Adolf Hansen (Schaffner).

 

It’s hard to make a movie about a misanthrope and not have it be a miserable experience. It’s kind of remarkable that Paul Thomas Anderson pulled it off with There Will Be Blood (2007), but most of the time the result is more like Wim Wenders Wrong Move (1975) – the second film in his road movie trilogy, made in three consecutive years in the mid-1970s. On the surface, it doesn’t have much in common with Alice in the Cities (1974) – the first of the three films. That film was naturalistic and shot in gorgeous black and white, and was about a writer (Rüdiger Vogler) travelling across America by himself – and then going from one small town to another in Germany, alongside a little girl he hardly knows. That film was nostalgic in a way – and the writer was searching for an American that was no longer there (and has changed even more since) and then seeing something similar in Germany.

 

div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> Wrong Move stars the same actor - Rüdiger Vogler – again as a writer, this time called Wilhelm. And again, he is travelling across Germany – this time with a group of people he barely knows. They are all drifters, of a sort – all kind of sleepwalking through their empty lives. And this time, Wenders and his cinematographer – the great Robby Muller – shoot the film, brilliantly, in color. In its way though, the film is connected with Alice in the Cities in that both films act as kind of time capsules – for a specific moment in time. You can see why Wrong Move was so acclaimed in its time in Germany – where it won most of the major awards for its year. And you can also see why the film hasn’t aged as well – as Germany has moved away from where it was at that moment. It is a portrait of a country and a people paralyzed by guilt and remorse – where there were still a lot of people around from the war, living their lives – and now their children were becoming adults, and not knowing what to do about their parents’ generation. It remains a key film in the German New Wave – but one that is probably more interesting in historical context than a film unto itself.

 

In the film, Wilhelm kind of gathers is motley crew of drifters. His mother (Marianne Hope) has sold her store, and has given him some money to travel – essentially, just to get him out of the house, where he complains about his inability to write - probably because he longs for connection with others in his writing, but pretty much hates everyone else. His travelling crew eventually includes a street singer, Laerees (Hans Christian Blech) and his mute juggler daughter of 14, Mignon (Natassja Kinski), actress Therese (Hanna Schygulla) and a really bad poet named Bernhard (Peter Kern). They travel around – by train, and then by car – often essentially delivering monologues to each other about their misery. They will eventually end up at the home of an Industrialist (Ivan Desny) by mistake, who they walk in on just as he’s about to kill himself, and he decides to delay that for a while. He has a few of those misery monologues of his own to deliver.

 

Schygulla and Desny would of course go on to play key roles in a masterpiece of German cinema – The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) by Rainer Werner Fassbiner. Desny’s role is even kind of similar – in that he is playing a miserable industrialist, marked for death. Schygulla is kind of wasted as the actress however – in a film that doesn’t really know what to do with its female characters – Kinski fares slightly better, perhaps because she is mute, and in essence, remains more mysterious than everyone else.

 

The film is a technical marvel by Wenders and Muller – highlighted by a very long shot of the various characters walking through a mountain path – their dialogue punctuated by distant gunshots (they were apparently real – from hunters nearby, but it works so well you would think it was a deliberate choice).  Wenders and Mueller find just the right look for the film though – from the road scenes, to the house of the industrialist that is falling down around them, to the streets they walk on after they leave. If nothing else, Wrong Move is a great looking film.

 

Wrong Move is ultimately a road movie about the pointlessness of the road movie. Most road movies have the main character learn a lesson along the way – becoming a better person when they return to the place they started their journey. What Wilhelm doesn’t really seem to learn anything on his journey – and neither does anyone else. He’s just as hopeless and misanthropic as ever- and the journey in the film doesn’t really end, as much as the characters just start drifting away from each other. It’s an odd ending, and perhaps a deliberately unsatisfying one. The Wrong Move for Wilhelm was leaving in the first place. And perhaps that’s what connects it most to Alice in the Cities – in that in both, the main characters are searching for something that isn’t there anymore – and perhaps, never was.